Gem depends on how easy it is for you to aquire 10k gold. Upgrading should be based on how long you're expecting to use the item. If you don't think you're going to get something better before 5.2, go ahead, weapons upgrades are fairly juicy.

Gem depends on how easy it is for you to aquire 10k gold. Upgrading should be based on how long you're expecting to use the item. If you don't think you're going to get something better before 5.2, go ahead, weapons upgrades are fairly juicy.

Yeah I agree with Huth on this one. The only other weapon that comes close to Kri'tak (surpassing it without the prismatic socket) is Regail's from Protectors, but Regail's only wins if you can get the elite version, which is not possible in LFR.

So Kri'tak will be your best upgrade until you can grab either normal Kri'tak or elite Regail's. If you aren't in an active raiding guild, you're pretty safe to upgrade the LFR version - it's your best upgrade because of the SP on it.

Originally Posted by Juvencus

It's not like you can help it, in BiS gear. Furthermore Haste is always better than Mastery before and after breakpoints.

Yeah exactly. The haste is essentially unavoidable, and since we aren't actively seeking the haste breakpoint anymore, spirit generally gets reforged into haste (since we really want pieces with innate crit if possible). Even now it's getting hard to not overshoot the hit cap with reforges, so I'm not exactly excited to see T15 or T16 stats.

Ahh, right. I can do that :P
Attempting Grand Empress tomorrow night, will hold off till at least then before i used it just incase

---------- Post added 2012-12-08 at 05:10 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Slippykins

Yeah I agree with Huth on this one. The only other weapon that comes close to Kri'tak (surpassing it without the prismatic socket) is Regail's from Protectors, but Regail's only wins if you can get the elite version, which is not possible in LFR.

So Kri'tak will be your best upgrade until you can grab either normal Kri'tak or elite Regail's. If you aren't in an active raiding guild, you're pretty safe to upgrade the LFR version - it's your best upgrade because of the SP on it.

Last time I checked the 8089 haste breakpoint build, off-piece hat was better than off-piece pants. Even if the pants were an upgrade of the same scale as the crit option (which it wouldn't be), which is around 400-500 DPS, it wouldn't surpass the crit build.

I typed this all out earlier at the airport terminal but I ran out of time as I pressed send. ):

I don't think we should be coming up with non-upgrade BiS list at this point. WC supports the upgrade system and afaik there are only a few items which are acting wonky, for those we can manually add stats. Considering we can fully upgrade 2 pieces every 3 weeks I think it would be much more beneficial to evaluate stats and gear using full upgrade versions.

We would need to see all 3 set ups fully upgraded and optimally reforged to see which set ups come out best. It's entirely plausible that after upgrading the 8089 bp becomes far more easily reached in those Crit builds, and would be silly to ignore. Perhaps one list is way over the hit cap and wastes stats or forces us to reforge into Mastery.

Point is I don't think you could definitely say that upgrading will not effect the lists; fully upgrading all 16 items will yield to a lot of extra stats and as you know with WC will change the values of stats in relation to Intellect, as well as force changes in reforging and gemming that could also lead to more int or secondary stats.

I do appreciate all the time and effort you have put into testing all combinations though, thank you!

I don't think we should be coming up with non-upgrade BiS list at this point. WC supports the upgrade system and afaik there are only a few items which are acting wonky, for those we can manually add stats. Considering we can fully upgrade 2 pieces every 3 weeks I think it would be much more beneficial to evaluate stats and gear using full upgrade versions.

We would need to see all 3 set ups fully upgraded and optimally reforged to see which set ups come out best. It's entirely plausible that after upgrading the 8089 bp becomes far more easily reached in those Crit builds, and would be silly to ignore. Perhaps one list is way over the hit cap and wastes stats or forces us to reforge into Mastery.

Point is I don't think you could definitely say that upgrading will not effect the lists; fully upgrading all 16 items will yield to a lot of extra stats and as you know with WC will change the values of stats in relation to Intellect, as well as force changes in reforging and gemming that could also lead to more int or secondary stats.

I do appreciate all the time and effort you have put into testing all combinations though, thank you!

I agree with you on the upgrading points, I made the "wont change the list" disclaimer because typically the stats upgrade linearly on ilvl (slightly dumbed down lol). I'll go through WrathCalcs once I've got some free time tonight or tomorrow (yesterday I flew back to Australia for christmas), but the only issue I can see is that it's going to be hard to pinpoint whether the WrathCalc numbers are incorrect, or whether Wowdb/Wowhead are also incorrect. I'll just be fiddling with generalistic stats with errors then, and shouldn't be a problem to find a general solution.

Edit: Ok, I've gone and done another quick comparison between the three options, and also included the hat/pants swap for the haste breakpoint (due to changing stats from upgrading and whatnot). These are my results, where pants/hat swap indicates off-piece hat being swapped to tier hat and vice versa for pants:

DPS build w/

DoC

HotW

NV

8089 haste BP (no swap)

120103.11

117979.78

116957.78

8089 haste BP (pants/hat swap)

120397.79

118281.34

117267.86

crit (no swap)

119280.62

117832.77

116879.09

crit (pants/hat swap)

119658.34

118249.94

117263.98

I've highlighted the two highest numbers for HotW and NV because these values are incredibly close and could easily be flip-flopped due to one or more reasons, including stat gains not being accurate in WrathCalcs (yet) from upgrading, and movement hurting one build more than the other. For HotW there is a 0.0265% difference in DPS, and for NV a 0.00331% difference. Thus, with the data and error margin given for these two alternatives, the only conclusion that can be made is that we can't see a noticeable difference between reaching the 8089 haste BP with a pants/hat swap and stacking full crit with a pants/hat swap. Using the hat as the off-piece, however, is an obvious DPS loss when you have all items upgraded; the hat is still better than the pants in terms of off-piece when no upgrades have occurred (haste BP build only), but this is meaningless because the crit build pulls ahead wildly in that situation.

I'd also like to note, that even if we can't discern between the two builds for single-target, the crit build will still be better without question when you have more than one target. Therefore, if the difference is negligible, there's no reason to go for the haste breakpoint build at any time as there's no guarantee you'd actually gain anything (you may even lose DPS).

Crit build is still the preferred build for this BiS list in terms of single- and multi-target fights. Was a good suggestion Stompped.

PS: with regards to how much haste you gain: non-upgrade has 6514 haste, upgrade has 6967 haste. This means in a fully-upgraded situation you would require 1122 haste still, which will funnel straight out of crit gems (mostly). So you're partially right, in that the bonus 453 haste you get for free from upgrading combats the loss in crit, but as you can see above, it doesn't make enough of a difference to be sufficiently or measurably positive.

Hi, i'm following this thread since you create it, i have a question about the new BiS list, we are now going in a full crit gear, why not take Garalon heroic cloak ?
I can't put links ><, it is Stormwake Mistcloak (+769int, +438hit, +557crit).
We loose 52 intell but win 557 crit, and maybe hit that could be reforged elsewhere.

Hi, i'm following this thread since you create it, i have a question about the new BiS list, we are now going in a full crit gear, why not take Garalon heroic cloak ?
I can't put links ><, it is Stormwake Mistcloak (+769int, +438hit, +557crit).
We loose 52 intell but win 557 crit, and maybe hit that could be reforged elsewhere.

I shall take a look for you; typically, the heroic elite stuff is better than the 509s.

So we gain 52 int, 363 haste, 339 mastery with the Corruption cloak, but lose 332 crit and 263 hit. Since we're mostly reforging in and out of haste, hit = haste in terms of stat weight. Also, crit is ~ 0.5 int, so 52 int = 104 crit. This reduces it down to 100 haste, 339 mastery vs. 228 crit. With this in mind, it's not too easy to see the difference of 280 DPS by looking at this, but if we take into account the marginal changes in stats at the H BiS level:

crit = 2.18
mastery = 1.86
int = 4.32

we can get a better look at our comparison. 339x1.86 + 100x?? vs. 228x2.18 = 630.54 + 100x?? vs. 497.04. This shows that even just the mastery surpasses the crit in terms of DPS benefit, without factoring in the extra 100 haste. I leave out the caculation for haste because WrathCalcs is currently inaccurate with its marginal changes in haste, though it's safe to say haste lies between mastery and crit.

So if I'm reading all this correct, once I have 4pc (Vanq tokens refuse to drop) with the tier legs I'll be sat on around 6700 haste (reforging away from hast where possible)

You would advise against going for the 8089 BP, despite being relatively close, with maximum crit?

Yes. The additional crit is equivalent to the breakpoint for single-target fights, and for multi-target fights (ie. most of them in T14), crit will always be better. So I wouldn't suggest going for the breakpoint, even if it is (kind of) close.

---------- Post added 2012-12-11 at 04:22 AM ----------

Originally Posted by huth

You lose 55 int, 607 mastery and 560 haste to gain 471 hit and 600 crit. Hit is only worth as much as whatever it is being reforged to, and we're already reforging away from it on all but one piece.

While crit is worth more than mastery or haste, the difference isn't big enough to make up for the hit which is pretty much useless at this point.

You're very right. Hit is becoming a useless stat already, and like I said earlier, I'm not looking forward to the next tier's stat distribution levels. It may come to the point where we go for the lower ilvl gear simply because it doesn't have wasted hit on it.